Paras to lead spring offensive in Afghanistan
Richard Norton-Taylor
Saturday October 6, 2007
The Guardian
For the first time since 1945, all three regular battalions of the Parachute Regiment - about 2,000 troops - will be deployed for combat. The Eurofighter/Typhoon, equipped with new missiles for a ground attack role, will be deployed for the first time in a hostile mission.
New Merlin helicopters from an RAF squadron formed this week will also be sent to the region.
The plan, being drawn up by the chiefs of staff, reflects the government's concern over the failure to win a decisive victory against the Taliban. Tomorrow marks the sixth anniversary of the first American and British missile strikes on Afghanistan in retaliation for the 9/11 attacks on the US, yet Nato-led forces are no closer to beating the Taliban, Nato commanders believe.
The Ministry of Defence said yesterday that a British officer from the Gurkha Rifles was killed, and two soldiers from the regiment injured, in an explosion in southern Afghanistan on Thursday. It is the first death of a member of the Gurkhas there. The soldiers were hit 19 miles from the Nato airbase at Kandahar and airlifted to the main British base at Camp Bastion.
The soldier's death takes the number of British troops killed in Afghanistan since the start of operations in 2001 to 82.
The decision by the heads of all three branches of the armed forces to deploy so much manpower and weaponry to southern Afghanistan also reflects their conviction, shared by ministers, that unlike Iraq, Afghanistan is on the frontline of the fight against international terrorism and that the conflict there is a "noble cause".
Under the plan, the Parachute Regiment will be sent to Helmand as part of 16 Air Assault Brigade next spring. Its deployment is expected to coincide with a further cut, perhaps of 1,500, in British troops in Basra which Gordon Brown is likely to refer to in his Commons statement on Iraq on Monday.
The prime minister is expected to set out the future role of British troops after they hand over to local forces responsibility for overall security of Basra province before the end of the year. During his flying visit to Baghdad this week, he announced that troops there would be cut to 4,500 by Christmas. There are about 5,250 there now and 7,700 in Afghanistan.
Reductions in the number of troops in Iraq will free up soldiers for deployment in Afghanistan at a time when the army is increasingly stretched, with commanders worried about the effect on service families and the resignation of experienced non-commissioned officers.
While Britain prepares to increase its military commitment to Afghanistan, senior Nato commanders are making it clear they are increasingly concerned about the restrictions -"caveats" - on the operations and movements that some countries, including Germany and the Netherlands, impose on their forces in Afghanistan. "Restrictions on operations are having profound consequences," said one Nato commander. He added: "It is very insidious and significant at every level." Nato is faced with the prospect of the first ground combat operation in its 58-year history collapsing in failure. Senior alliance officials describe Afghanistan as "Nato's number one priority".
"No one in Afghanistan is safe," according to a senior military figure. US-led coalition forces and Afghan troops clashed with insurgents during a raid in eastern Afghanistan yesterday, leaving several militants and civilians, including a woman and a child, dead.
Matt Waldman, Oxfam's head of policy in Kabul, told the Guardian: "The truth is that the international community was distracted by Iraq, with terrible consequences for Afghanistan. The urgent priority is to remove the conditions of desperate poverty in which extremism can thrive."
Des Browne, the defence secretary, told a fringe meeting at the Labour party conference last week that the Taliban would have to be involved in a peace process "because they are not going away any more than I suspect Hamas are going away from Palestine". Hamid Karzai, the Afghan president, this week repeated his offer of talks with the Taliban only to be met with the response that US and foreign troops would first have to agree to leave.
